Walks on the Wildflower
The Wayfarers, a company offering guided walking trips throughout the world, offers a walk through the Bernese Oberland of Switzerland July 24-31. The Bernese Oberland & Lake Lucerne trip offers moderate to energetic walking at altitudes up to 7,000 feet on paths with moderate climbs and some steep descents. Take a cog train up to Wegenalp and hike through flower-covered pastures and alpine scenery. You might even see this legendary wildflower made famous by a movie.
Crested Butte hosts its annual Wildflower Festival July 11-17, 2011. It’s a weeklong celebration of wildflowers with guided hikes ranging from easy to technical. Visitors can sign up and pay for hikes starting April 15. If you’re comfortable hiking on your own, grab a map and head to Lily Lake, West Maroon Pass or the Teocalli Mountain Hike. Wildflower season lasts all summer.
Lions, giraffes and elephants are dandy, but so is stalking wildflowers in Africa. The Grootbos Private Nature Reserve in South Africa offers its own version of the safari, allowing visitors to see 750 species of plants. Consider the Fairest Cape and Grootbos tour, which combines a stay at the nature reserve with a few days visiting Cape Town. After a hard day’s flower identification, relax in one of these luxury lodges.
The Sierra Club will offer an organized trip next summer that lets you hike alpine mountain trails during the height of wildflower season. Hiking the Alps of Bavaria and Tyrol, Germany and Austria is scheduled for June 21-July 1, 2012. Participants will also visit Bavarian castles and historic churches, tour Munich and Salzburg, and enjoy a Mozart dinner concert.
Saunter among more than 50 species of alpine wildflowers while pack animals carry most of your stuff. The Sierra Club is offering a trip called “Families, Wildflowers, and Llamas in the Gros Ventre Wilderness, Wyoming” from July 17-23, 2011. Charismatic megafauna frolic in this wilderness area, too. In addition to elk and mule deer, wouldn’t it be great to catch a glimpse of one of these critters?
Antelope Valley California Poppy Reserve
Celebrate spring with a stroll through grassy fields of orange poppies and meadows bursting with red paintbrush and purple lupine. Here are 11 places worldwide where you can walk among the wildflowers.
As of March 2011, California poppies are just starting to bloom at this state natural reserve north of L.A., where visitors can walk along eight miles of trails through gentle rolling hills, including a paved section for wheelchair access. The park is open year-round from sunrise to sunset, but you’ll catch wildflower season from now until mid-May.
The Sierra Club offers guided treks through the rhododendron forests in Nepal, and these are not your grandmother’s rhodies. In the Annapurnas, these woody plants soar up to 60 feet tall. The Springtime in the Annapurnas, Nepal tour has come and gone for 2011, but it’s not too early to plan for next February and March. Hikers on this trip also see Himalayan vistas, explore the ancient Newari city of Bhaktapur, and visit numerous Buddhist temples, including the famous Monkey Temple.
Spray Park, Mt. Rainier National Park, Wash.
Want to stretch your legs and see a glaciated volcano towering over a spectacular flower-filled meadow? In summer, take a six-mile hike from Mowich Lake in Mt. Rainier National Park to a subalpine meadow full of purple lupine and red paintbrush. You might also see coyotes and these big hairy rodents munching on the flowers. Hikers beware: This trail isn’t for couch potatoes. You’ll need at least 4 hours to cover the 1,300 feet of elevation gain. Get a printable topographic map and directions on the national park web site.
Valley of Flowers, the Himalayas, India
Greaves Tours creates customized trips for travel throughout India. Hankering to see the exotic Blue Himalayan Poppy? Ask the company to design a tour of Valley of Flowers in Garhwal Himalayas in the north Indian state of Uttaranchal. During peak wildflower season from July to September, you can also see the dianthus, calendula, anemones, marsh marigold, prinula, potentilla and more. See even more Blue Himalayan Poppies.
Lady Bird Johnson, our former first lady, and actress Helen Hayes founded the National Wildflower Research Center in 1982 to protect and preserve North America's native plants and natural landscapes. Now called the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center, this attraction beckons visitors to its gardens in Austin every spring. Easy trails of one mile or less take you past native Texas plants, including Texas bluebonnets and Indian blanket. Want to see what’s in bloom right now? Check out the center’s Bluebonnet cam.
Great Smoky Mountains National Park in Tennessee and North Carolina is a great place to see spring flowers bursting into bloom, which happens from February to April. The park has a wide variety of trails of three miles or less that will take you past yellow lady's slipper orchids, columbine, bleeding heart, violets, wood sorrel and trilliums. Check out the park’s list of wildflower walks and download a trail map. In summer, a different set of wildflowers blankets the ground, including red cardinal flowers, pink turtleheads, Turk’s cap lily, small purple-fringed orchids, bee balm, butterfly weed, black-eyed susans, jewel weed and many others.